Just FYI, this is what trivialising rape looks like

The rape apologist brigade often decry feminists for “trivialising rape”, perhaps by making distinctions between “serious rape” and “date rape”, or perhaps by suggesting that labelling non-consensual sexual experiences as rape is infantilising women.

What we do, though, is not trivialising rape at all. We argue that the legal definition is insufficient. We point out that the figures for rape are far larger than most people would like to imagine. We point out that people do not have to simply suck up the fact that they have been raped and that it is all right to feel horrible about it. We acknowledge rape as incredibly serious; we do not trivialise it at all.

On the other hand, some do trivialise rape. Take this chap, who thinks that building wind farms are just like rape, because he thinks windfarms are a bit ugly and they are subsidised by public money and he’s an unpleasant fuckwipe. Or this chap, who thinks paying taxes is just like rape, because he’s an unpleasant fuckwipe. Or this chap, who inexplicably managed to get himself elected as Mayor of London, who thinks giving money to charity is just like rape, because he’s an unpleasant fuckwipe.

It’s clear that these people have never been raped, and it’s telling that all three come from such a privileged position that they consider minor, trifling little issues which are actually beneficial for society to be akin to personal violation.

It is these unpleasant fuckwipes, not feminists, who trivialise rape.

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Props to @thatsoph for finding the windfarm-rape article and @bc_tmh for the Boris piece.

One thought on “Just FYI, this is what trivialising rape looks like”

Thank South Park for this. For an entire generation, rape is the new Hitler; universally invoked without any discerning thought. It can be cited for the purpose of being inflammatory just as easily as for a thoughtless punch line. Admittedly, South Park was not the originator of rape-as-a-buzzword, but it led the charge and made it commonplace on TV and in pop culture.

For the last decade, Star Wars fans have decried, “George Lucas raped my childhood” because he made the prequels and altered the original movies. Not coincidentally, South Park debuted in 1997, shortly after the Star Wars Special Editions arrived. By then, first-generation Star Wars fans were young adults living in a culture where angry right-wing radio and TV personalities spent every minute of their broadcast railing against how “stupid” political correctness was; that it was offensive to have to be respectful of others.

Consequently, there are a lot of people who have simply become so desensitized that they fail to even see that their hyperbole is damaging to others. They content themselves that rape victims have bigger problems than their “harmless” little joke, and that everyone else “gets it.”

Sadly, that genie is out of the bottle and I have no idea how to combat it. There seems to be no obvious way to retroactively instill maturity, humility or reason.